


Friends Don't Leave Friends in Graveyards

by jairose



Category: Captain - Fandom, Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Canon Divergence - Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Fix-It, Friendship all the way, HE IS A FRIEND, I love all of these idiots equally, JESH, LIKE...., Like, No bashing., Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), SERIOUSLY STEVE I KNOW HE BEAT YOU UP AND TRIED TO KILL YOUR FRIEND, Steve goes back, Toddlers, Tony is NOT LEFT ALONE, YOU DON'T LEAVE FRIENDS IN A SIBERIAN GRAVEYARD, after fight scene: fix it, but - Freeform, i just want everyone to be happy, kind of, seriously, the lot of them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-24
Updated: 2016-05-24
Packaged: 2018-06-10 12:10:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6955981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jairose/pseuds/jairose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the end of Civil War, nobody won. How fucked up is that?<br/>[My take on what could have happened had Steve realized that he had started it, and he could finish it too. And that you don't leave your friends in a graveyard. Gesh. This isn't twenty-first-century knowledge. This is just not being a dick knowledge.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Friends Don't Leave Friends in Graveyards

They don’t make it far. Captain America and the Winter Soldier.

No.

Not cap and soldier. Steve and Bucky. Shieldless. Mind-less-no-more.

They don’t make it far **not** on account of the blood loss or the exhaustion or any number of things like broken bones, blurry vision, the cold.

No. They didn’t make it far because none of what had just happened was right.

And it wasn’t Steve that noticed it first.

“Steve.” Bucky says. And its a rasp and its hard on his throat, clearly exhausted but opening his mouth for what needed to be said. “We can’t leave him.”

Steve closes his eyes. Because, he knows, alright? Damnit. He **knows** . He knew he couldn’t leave Tony behind like that. Sitting on the cold hard floor of a Russian hidey-hole where too many people had died already. And yes, they’d been Russian assassins, but they had been people. He couldn’t leave Tony laying next to his Shield that he had so simply dropped as if it _hadn’t_ just been an extension of himself. As if a part of his entire life lay next to him.

And friends didn’t leave friends to silence surrounded by the dead. They just didn’t.

Even if those friends had hit a... rough patch.

“Let me get you somewhere safe first.” Steve tells him resolutely, because they’d just fought over him. Tony and Steve had just come to blows, had bled, had gone hard on each other. For Bucky. Had torn apart a friendship that Steve had thought solid, unshakable, and just. For Bucky.

Now, Steve knew he had to go back.

Not for Bucky. For himself.

That’s when they find T’Challa. Too tired to get up in arms, Steve physically feels himself shutting down. Wasn’t it bad enough that he’d had to fight Tony? Now he had to fight the king of a Nation that he hadn’t even known existed until he came out of the ice. But. That’s when T’Challa offers them sanctuary. Offers forgiveness instead of punches. Offers and offers instead of attacking and getting revenge, even if the revenge he would have dealt would have been petty and unjust.

And really, Steve can’t make excuses now. He has to go back. If a man, if a King, could be so forgiving and so apologetic after everything - then what about Captain America?

So he leaves Bucky with T’Challa.

And T’Challa takes that exactly how it should be taken. As an offering of trust. As an offering of Captain America and Bucky Barns. As a hand extended in friendship. As an apology as well.

T’Challa swears he won’t make the same mistake he had before, hunting down a man who had done no wrong to him. He swears it.

* * *

Tony Stark doesn’t notice Steve right away. He’s propped up against a column, staring out into some unfathomable distance, mouth pursed in a hard line, with eyes shining. He doesn’t shiver, even though the suit has lost power and is no longer keeping him warm. Unnaturally calm and cool and solid like a statue.

The Shield is between them. A gulf like Steve had never noticed laying there like a dead fish. An homage to Howard that had soured something the first meeting that Steve had ever had with Tony.

And Steve walks right over it.

“Come to finish the job?”

Steve slides down the other column, right in front of him, and shakes his head. “If I wanted you dead, if I wanted anyone dead, they’d be dead.”

Stark stares at him. Wide eyed, blank, and with the smallest smirk tugging at his lips. That dark humor of his shining through.

“You know. I believe it now.”

And that one hurts but it's deserved. Steve **had** just beaten the crap out of him. For a good cause of course. Bucky was always a good cause. Brain-messed up as he was, amnesic as he was, alone as he had been. He was a good cause.

But Steve couldn’t really separate Bucky and Tony right now. Not with how Tony was looking at him. All accusation and dark eyes and humor in the face of death.

“If it’s any consolation.” Steve starts, before shaking his head. “No. It’s not gonna be any consolation, but I’ve got to say it anyway. You threaten anyone that you’re going to kill them, I’ll always stop you. I don’t care how many people they’ve murdered. I don’t care if it’s my best friend, or a neighbor, or the next wack job on the corner. We’re not judge, jury, and executioner.”

“Did you come back just to lecture me?” Stark asks, and its clear he’s in pain, but there's almost a measure of wonder in his voice. Disbelief.

“No,” Steve shakes his head, because, honestly, how many people honestly though he would lecture them after a fight? “I came to help you get back to the mainland.”

This time, Stark is all tightened muscles, trapped in that heavy suit, eyes angrier than he’s ever seen.

“Why?”

Steve leans more fully on the column, feeling every inch 70 years old.

“Because... we’re friends.”

“I beat you black and blue and tried to kill your ‘best friend’.”

“A crappy friend than.”

“I would have killed him.”

“You’re not the first.” Steve says, thinking of T’Challa and how he’d left the man in his capable hands and how he still didn’t fear for his long-lost-best-friends life. “And you won’t be the last. And it’s never going to be easy. But...” Steve paused. “But if I don’t believe in something, I’ll fall for everything. I know I will. If I give in on one thing. On one part of me... then who am I?”

“Captain America.” Stark answers without really thinking about it. There is a light coming back in his eyes, but hes still in pain, still pissed, still snappy.

“Not anymore.” Steve says, looking at the Shield laying on the ground to the side. “I can’t be Captain America anymore. I see that now.”

“See... see what? What the fuck, Steve?” Tony snarls, tired, trying for the first time to fling his entire weight forward. It doesn’t work. He’s still trapped.

Steve reached forward to tug on the suit, breaking apart a few of the joints so it didn’t lay as heavily on Tony. The suit was still strong, no matter the power source missing, and at half strength, Steve wasn’t really able to do anything more without a plan. No. Wait. Yes there was.

“You said it. I’m not worthy of the Shield,” Steve shrugged, frowning as he fiddled with the manual latch underneath the left thruster on his hand. “Not that I ever thought I was... but, you made me realize it. You also made me realize that there's no place for me here anymore.”

The arm or of the left hand completely fell apart. Tony was able to flex his arm for the first time in twenty minutes.

Tony didn’t interrupt, just watched as Steve continued.

“It’s funny, isn’t it? No place for Captain America in America.” He snorted in amusement. If only Peggy could see him now. His fingers came to a rocking halt, before he pushed past the insane bubble of sadness that had just enveloped his throat and tear ducts at the thought of his long dead friend.

Tony still was silent. Unusually so.

“You know, when I woke up, I knew immediately that something was wrong. I told em it was the Radio that tipped me off, but everything really was off. The smell, the air pressure, the woman who came in... her bra,” He scowled wrly. “That was just the icing on the cake. Fury ever tell you that?”

Tony raised a brow. _Really?_ It seemed to say.

Steve smiled sadly. Fury telling anyone anything was funny, it really was.

“No. Of course not. Not something he’d let slip. I... I panicked. You know? Busted through like six walls and tore through the base straight into the middle of Time Square. Didn’t know it was time Square at the time. Didn’t know anything except that I had gone into the ice to stop the Red Skull from winning the war and woke up somewhere warm, and comfy, a lot comfier than anything the army had ever given us.”

Steve got the right arm to completely come apart. Now Stark was just left with the main part of his suit. Was it under the chest plate or was it under the collar? Steve furrowed his brow as he tried to remember.

“Collar.” Stark supplied, flexing each finger and fisting his hand. “What else.”

It wasn’t a question. He was demanding more to the story. Steve had never actually opened up this much, but he felt overwhelmed and full and empty at the same time. And... well, when would be the next time he even saw Tony? When would he ever have to explain, to apologise, to say what needed to be said?

“They told me that we won the war. Told me that I was instrumental in it. That I was the reason we won.” Steve shook his head again as he reached his hand into Starks armor next to his neck. “It was bullshit, you know? Like something they tell a kid to remind ‘em their special. My ma used to do that.”

The armor came apart and Steve leaned back as he remembered exactly what his mother used to say.

“ _You’re small because you're smart, you’re sick because God wants you back earlier than planned,_ ” He mimicked. “Nobody ever really questioned my presence here, though. I just appeared one day and people saw me and thought I was good, thought they knew me because of a museum in Washington. Thought I was some kind of saint.”

“I don’t think that.” Tony was quick to correct him.

“You were one of the only ones. It was easy to get along with everyone else, hard to get along with you, and then as the years progressed... it was the reverse. I never liked yes-men. But I didn’t realize they were all yes-men until I started understanding what they were saying.” Steve shook his head. “Words didn’t mean what they used to, everyone meant one thing when they meant something else. But you, you never minced your words.”

“Where is this going Steve?” Tony asked as he set about undoing the legs of his suit. This time, Steve heard how tired he was. How exhausted both of them were.

“I won’t fight you.” He said instead of saying everything he wanted to say. “If you want to, I’ll step aside. You can go after Bucky, and I’ll continue to protect him, but I won’t actively stop you. You know I won’t be able to. You’ll make your own mistakes, but at least it will be with a clear consciousness that I made mine. And this time, you won’t be as blinded by bloodlust. Maybe... maybe you’ll even figure out why I’m doing it.”

“All that talking and you still won’t tell me?” Tony said as he shimmied out of his broken suit. It said something that he was still in a black suit, completely pristine, underneath it all. “Shucks, I feel let down.”

“You want me to tell you or show you?” Steve asks.

Tony comes to a full body stop. Flinching and shivering. He doesn’t say anything but Steve carefully leads him out of the fortress turned cemetery. It’s not the first time he doesn’t know what he’s doing, and it certainly won’t be the last. But this time, it feels different. It feels momentous.

The Shield stays on the ground behind them.

* * *

“What’s it do?” Bucky is asking as Steve is walking onto the Quinjet. T’Challa is standing in front of Bucky who is sitting on the bench in the back. The black man has a needle in his hand very non threateningly. Bucky still obviously feels threatened.

“It’s a mild sedative.”

Bucky scowled and answered quickly, “I don’t need it.”

“The way your arm was destroyed would beg to differ.” T’Challa said with all the patience of a man who had been arguing the entire time Steve had been gone. “It should feel as if you’ve just lost your arm all over again.”

“I don’t need it.”

Tony entered directly behind Steve then. And Bucky shut his mouth with a click, looking away from the purpling, bruising face of Stark.

“Stark.” T’Challa greets only sparing the man a quick look, before doing a double take. There is a wry smile on his face. “Well... It seems you weren’t kidding when you said nobody came out of the fight unscathed.”

“It was in defense.” Bucky scowls.

“I bet.” T’Challa snorted.

“Where’s Zemo?” Steve asked as he walked his little red, white, and blue booty over to sit on the bench next to Bucky. Or, well, more like collapsed. He’d mostly been putting on a show of strength for Tony, and Tony would know that if he looked close enough.

“Did you know these lovely jets have four cells?”

Steve chuckled before shaking his head. “I did not. I’m guessing he’s in one?”

“No. He’s in the the prisoner bathroom.”

Bucky huffed an almost chuckle, staring at T’Challa with something akin to admiration. Stark’s mouth dropped. Steve, well, Steve threw his head back and laughed. It was only a moment of humor, but Steve felt pretty free right at the moment. And pretty safe. Without Stark in a suit, he really was just as human as the rest of them.

“Did you always grab the left side of your chest when you laughed?” Bucky asked unexpectedly. The way they were sitting he had to crane his head pretty severely.

“Uhm. I think so?”

Bucky's brow furrowed. “I remembered when you were smaller... You didn’t do it so much.”

“I didn’t do a lot of things before the serum.” Steve said with an eyeroll, slumping against the wall behind him. Looking very much like a petulant two year old. “I was dying, remember?”

Bucky cocked his head, looking like a puppy, before nodding. Every question included a pause, as if he wasn’t sure of the information himself, even though there was quite a lot of it. “Yeah. They said you wouldn’t live past... fifteen? Asthma, scoliosis, partially-deaf,  rheumatic fever, ulcers, and... I know there are more. I remember more... Did i get the worst parts?”

Steve nodded. Yeah, he had. Along with a whole other list, but if Bucky remember that...

“Jesus Christ.” Tony said behind him. Steve ignored him, confused, because hadn’t that been in the file? “You remember all that?”

“You were sick the entirety of before the war.” Bucky answered, still not meeting anyone's eyes. “Of course I’d remember your bony ass... it’s... it’s during the war and after that I’m hazy on.”

Steve felt his heart both expand too large for his chest and break. A feeling not unlike being strangle. Heart strangled.

“We can talk about it later.” Steve tells him. Firmly. No nonsense. He must have had his Captain America voice on because Bucky looked at him, looked at the ground, looked at Stark, and then nodded. All with a mouth unsmiling and pursed like he’d licked a lemon.

Steve turned as T’Challa tried to convince him again, unsuccessfully, to take the sedative and nap the long ride back to Wakanda. Steve was leaning heavily against the quinjet interrior. Slumped and exhausted and all manner of bruises and battered, yet his eyes never left Bucky’s face. His scowl ever present. His face the same old Tony Stark.

And yet... there was something there. Something that Steve had been seeing more and more of as of late. It wasn’t compassion, or sympathy, or understanding, or anything so nearly kind and gushy, but there was a measure level of stability and watchfulness. Tony stood against the wall and watched Bucky.

And judged him.

Steve wasn’t sure if he would be found wanting. The ex-soldier himself would never find such a fault with Bucky, not after everything they’d already talked about. Not after everything he had already endured.

“Where are we dropping you off?” T’Challa asks unassumingly into the stillness. It’s aimed at Stark.

“Where you guys heading?”

“I think you know.”

Stark nodded. Of course he did. He was with the King of Wakanda after all. There was only one place to go.

“I’ll decide the closer to land we get.” Tony answers before turning off into the interior of the jet and settling into the hub. “Call me for the inflight meal.”

* * *

 

Twenty minute into the flight, Stark stopped tapping his fingers incessantly against the arm of the chair. He should be sleeping. ANywhere else and he would be. But he wasn’t. Because he didn’t trust himself to sleep. Didn’t trust anyone here.

Surprisingly, he trusted T’Challa the least. The reason was simple.

With Rogers and Barnes, he’d attacked first. They had defended. They had defended so well, they won, and left him alive. T’Challa had been on his side of the fight, on the side of the Accords. Of the law. Now, it seemed, he wasn’t.

It had been thirty minutes since lift off.

“Why?” He asked into the silence of the jet. Not even a second later, T’Challa’s voice answered.

“Why what?”

“Barnes. You haven’t killed him. Thought you would.”

“He didn’t kill my father,” T’Challa sounded like he had just shrugged, but Tony didn’t care enough to turn to look. “He was falsely accused. In my land, that’s a grave offense. If I didn’t offer to repair what I had done, I would be no better than Zemo. No matter how little blood I have on my hands. A man's reputation is all he has.”

“So that’s it.” And even Tony knows he sounds resigned, tired. Worn.

A beat of silence.

“... They did not tell me what happened in the base. I did not ask.”

Tony tensed up.

“It is not my place to ask, but I must question you on one thing: If you had succeeded... what would you be doing right now?”

It was a terrible image that came to Tony Stark’s mind. He knew exactly at what point the fight at been lost. When Captain America had come and saved Barnes after he’d blasted his arm off. If Stark had figured out the algorithms of Rogers punches and kicks and blocked, if he’d had seconds more, he would have won. And Barnes would be dead. And Steve would be sitting in the snow, Shield dropped to the side, kneeling in the snow. Sad. Destroyed. He could picture it like it had happened. It hurt that he could. That ever since his near death experience, he’d pictured all of his Avengers like that. Or dead. Or in a pile, dead.

“I would have gotten justice.”

Even Tony didn’t quite believe it this time.

“And you would have murdered two people.”

Tony looked at him then. He had to. What did he know? T’Challa only looked at him, unimpressed, sad, and completely and totally without judgement. Stark knew why. The young man had been willing to do exactly what Stark had been willing to do to avenge his father’s murder. Then Stark looked closer to the words. To the meaning.

Two people. Dead. Steve was a super soldier, if a bit of ice didn’t kill him, surely -

Tony tensed.

“Steve would never - “

“Yes...” Steve’s voice came out of the side, the hallway. “Yes I would have.”

Tony couldn’t fathom it. For a second, for a minute, he just stared at Steve Rogers perfect face, his perfect teeth, and leaned body. He saw only a liar. He saw only his friend who had made a bad choice, who had defended the wrong ‘friend’.

And then that moment ended and he really saw exactly what he knew he would have seen if he had looked in a mirror.

Haggard. Steve looked haggard. Exhausted. But not like Stark looked. No. Steve healed and bettered himself, and was generally always in better shape after a match-up than Stark, but this time, even that didn’t look good on him. He looked young, younger than Stark had thought he would look, and Stark remembered what his file had said, what his age had been listed when he had gone under the ice, when the war had been won, when he had enlisted.

Steve had only been twenty six. When they had first met, the man had only been, at most, twenty seven. Tony himself had been well into his forties.

“He’s not worth it.” Stark said, echoing the same words Barnes had said hours ago, on this very flight, in this very seat. Steve flinched bodily at the words.

“If he’s not worth it. Then neither am I.”

And Stark realized then, in that perfectly horrible second, that Steve Rogers was not well adjusted. That Steve Rogers was not coping well. That Steve Rogers was just a man, like he was, that bled, that lived, that breathed, and that felt. And then Stark realized that it was a lie, because Steve Rogers was still a better man than him, because he felt whatever Stark felt, but ten times that.

And as someone with PTSD of almost dying in a fight against alien invaders, that was saying something.

“You’re worth ten of him - “ Stark started to say, but was cut off at a wry, stubborn and sarcastic snort.

“He’s worth ten of me.” His eyes were steel. His jaw was clenched. “Twenty. Thirty. I’ll never be able to repay him. I owe him more than my life.”

And Stark realized the last thing he would realize as he watched Steve straighten up: Tony Stark didn’t know Steve Rogers at all. Not one bit. Except, that was a lie too, because now Tony understood Steve more than he ever thought he would.

“Wakanda, right?” He asks, distractedly of T’Challa, who had just been sitting quietly out of the way, piloting the jet.

“Yes.”

“I want to come with.”

“... Why?”

“They’re going for healing right...?”

“In a manner.”

“I’ve heard Wakanda Doctors are the best,” He said, pulling himself up. He knew what he needed to do now. “What do they know about the brain?”

T’Challa smiled, slowly, without teeth and with a measure of amusement in his eyes. “Everything there is to know that has been known or found.”

“Good enough for me.”

And he settled in to the quiet with a renewed purpose. A purpose that didn’t have a name yet, but that felt right. He was a selfish person, he wasn’t doing this for the Cap, or for the murder-of-his-parents, or for Pepper, or for Rhodney.

He wasn’t even really doing it for himself, though he knew that he was the largest part of why. He was doing it because if Steve Fucking Rogers, the apple of his father's eye had been as fucked up by whatever Howard had still managed to leave behind in the world, than the least all of them could do was fix it. Fix it and forget it and then shoot it dead in a desert.

Or in a small clearing in Wakanda.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Well... This turned out weird. I just wanted to do a little fix-it.This all started because I thought to myself: Steve and Bucky are finally getting the healing they deserve, and what's Tony Stark getting? Political crap, Accord non-sense, stress, and more stress, and oh, wait, isn't he also, you know, SUFFERING FROM PTSD? Cause everyone just kind of blows over that. Which, not cool. So originally, this was going to be a fix it where they talk about getting help and then actually going and getting it. BUT. They just wouldn't get there. >.> SO. I've got this. I wanted a short little little blurb. Now I got this monster.  
> Hope you guys liked it!  
> Also. I'm really bad at this whole 'tenses' thing. This is the first time I've ever jumped around as much as I did in this story and I think it works? BUt... like? I don't know. Any help would be appreciated it!


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